


Looking to You, Princess

by MaryWollstonecrafty



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, F/M, RebelSoldier!Bellamy, TW mentions of sexual violence, princess!clarke
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-04-01 12:22:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4019575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryWollstonecrafty/pseuds/MaryWollstonecrafty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The massive double doors at the end of the great hall swing open with a crack, bringing in the prisoner flanked by two palace guards.</p><p>He strides into the great hall with confidence, bloodied sword still swinging by his side. </p><p>He looks so young, I think. If not for the rage burning hot in his dark eyes he wouldn’t look like a killer at all.  But he is.  He’s one of the men who are killing my people. </p><p>He is one of the men that killed my father." </p><p>Or AU in which Clarke is an actual princess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I might have just watched the entire second season of the 100 in 48 hours and I have a lot of feelings you guys. This AU is a product of those feelings, and I'm super excited about it. I have the general plot mapped out and nothing but time (hell yeah, summer) so I should be updating regularly. This is my first work in this fandom, so please let me know what you think! 
> 
> (Also Aircan is a mix of the Gaelic and Irish words for Arc.)

Mina rushes into my quarters, door swinging madly, skirts swishing wildly around her, hair springing, untamed, from the bun at the nape of her neck. “Your Majesty,” she says, sucking in a breath, “Your mother requests your presence in the great hall. You are wanted for the sentencing”. 

“The sentencing?” I ask. I'm rarely included official matters, let alone those that actually matter. My mother must be getting desperate for help, that or she's finally decided it might be time to train me for the role I will one day inherit. Well, inherit if the rebels don't have their way. 

“They’ve found one” she huffs, still attempting to catch her breath. “a rebel trying to break into the castle.”

“And finish us off, I suppose?” I laugh, though I’m not feeling particularly cheerful. The thought of a rebel trying to enter the castle chills me to the bone. 

“Exactly.” Mina says. She sounds scared.

I gather my skirts around me, and without another word stride out of my quarters and down the long candle-lit staircase leading down into the throne room. I catch a glimpse of my great grandmother’s portrait out of the corner of my eye. Her narrow grey eyes, the same color as my own, look disappointed in me.

My great grandmother. Alexandra the Great. Alexandra the Peace Maker. Alexandra the Unifier. It was 103 years ago that she united the warring nation-states and put an end to the bloody conflict that had marred this land for over a century. She was canonized after her death and we were blessed with her legacy, a nation of peace. I wonder what she would think if she saw us now? She made the nation of Aircan great. We’ve done nothing but sully it.

My grandmother, Victoria, her daughter whittled her life away with jewels and parties and too much champagne. My mother, her daughter, was never taught how to be a ruler, only how to wear expensive dresses and please the nobles. Please the nobles and they sent us grain. Send us grain, and we can continue to exist at the palace in peace. This is the way it has been for a hundred years. Until the rebels on the Western Borders decided they’d had enough. The stabbed the nobles while they slept. They burned the fields and rallied men. They snuck a traitor into the palace who poisoned my father at our dinner table. My mother and I watched helplessly as his mouth foamed up and he dropped dead right there on the flagstone floor. There was poison meant for us too, but my father took the first bite, and unknowingly saved us both.

It has been two years since they took my father, and now my days are spent in this gilded cage, wasting my life away in gowns and pearls, watching boys from my window, marching in straight lines off to die. I often find myself wishing I could join them. But I am a princess. I am a prisoner. 

\--

My heels click on the floor as I enter the great hall. My mother is already perched on her throne, Dark blue silks wrapped around her, crown perched atop her brown hair.

“Clarke” she greets me airily.

“Mother” I nod, not risking asking any questions as to why I've been summoned. 

I climb the steps of the dais and position myself in my throne, hoping I look more comfortable than I feel. I’m sweating under my heavy dress and the weight of my tiara is giving me a headache. The guards positioned along the walls around the room won’t look me in the eye, can’t look me in the eye, and it makes me feel a hollow sort of loneliness. Deep down I’m scared of what I’m about to be faced with, and there's not an emotion I detest more than fear.

Before I can spare another thought, the massive double doors at the end of the hall swing open with a crack, bringing in the prisoner flanked by two palace guards.

He strides into the great hall with confidence, bloodied sword still swinging by his side. The look on his face is all bravado and thinly concealed hatred. His dark wavy hair is slicked down across his forehead with dirt and sweat. Across one high cheekbone a cut is still halfheartedly dripping blood. His boots are caked with mud and the chains around his ankles and wrists clang and reverberate in an echo, breaking the deafening silence, as he marches across the cavernous room towards the dais where I sit in my throne next to my mother.

He looks so young, I think. If not for the rage burning hot in his dark eyes he wouldn’t look like a killer at all. But he is. He’s one of the men who are killing my people.

He is one of the men that killed my father.

I try to pay attention to what the hulking guards who flank him are saying, but I can’t. I’m mesmerized by the way his hands are shaking, giving him away.

The one on the left is giving an account of what happened. They found him near the tunnel below the east tower. He stabbed the soldier who sounded the alarm. It took 4 more to bring him down.

He’s at our feet now, standing just steps away from the bottom of the platform on which our thrones are placed. I can see the shadow of a beard beginning on his sharp jaw line. I can see the sorry state of his black, muddied clothing.

His eyes dart up from the floor to meet mine, they’re warm and brown. They bore into mine, unblinking and focused. It feels like he’s trying to say something to me, but I don’t know what it could be.

“Execution-”

The word cuts like a sword through the bubble of our eye-contact, both of us jerking our eyes away to look at my mother.

“What?” I blurt out.

“Execution. As Queen of Aircan. I sentence this traitor to death by hanging.”

“You can’t do that!” I exclaim.

“Clarke-“ my mother hisses through her teeth, turning to look at me, rage evident in her face. “Do not defy me in front of the prisoner.”

“But this isn’t what dad would want. You know that” I whisper back at her.

“Your father is dead. For all we know this is the man who killed him.”

“But we don’t know that” I plead, confused as to why I am defending this stranger. She is right, for all we know he is the man who killed my father. But I am also correct. We don’t know that at all. “He has the right to a trial. You know that’s what dad would have done” I whisper.

“Men like him did not give your father a trial” she replies darkly. 

“And what was it he always said? We won’t let them determine who we are. Rebel or not, this man is still an Aircan citizen. He has the right to a trial” I say. 

My mother stops to consider this. She has always been hesitant to accept any idea she didn’t first come up with herself, no matter its merit.

She takes a deep breath and looks directly at the prisoner at our feet.

“Take this man to the dungeon to await sentencing” she proclaims, voice reverberating through the great hall. Relief floods through me, though I haven't the faintest idea why. I am certain, however, that this is the last sentencing I'll be invited to for a long while. I can see the anger at my defiance set in my mother's jaw line.

The prisoner's brown eyes meet with mine once more, and I think he is trying to communicate something like thanks. The guards at his side take him by the arms and lead him away, forcing him to tear his eyes from mine.

They lead him across the hall and through the double doors once more.

He doesn’t look back.

\--

I make my way back up to my quarters in a daze. I tell Mina to tell my mother I have a headache and will be skipping dinner. I don’t touch a crumb of the tray the kitchens send up in replacement. I attempt to read, in an attempt to distract myself from thoughts the prisoner from the great hall, but the words on the page swim in front of me and I am unable to focus. I position myself on a bench placed along a large Western-facing window, resting my forehead against the cool glass. I watch the sky turn a blazing red, and the sun sink below the trees. I think of the prisoner, now down in the dungeons. I wonder if they gave him dinner. I wonder if he has a window. I wonder why I have never thought these thoughts before. At any given moment there are a hundred men in chains, just floors below me and I have never once spared any of them a single thought. The realization fills me with guilt.

I ask Mina to ready me for bed right as the room gets dark. She helps me step out of heavy brocade skirts, and deftly unlaces the corset that has been confining my lungs all day, but I still don’t feel like I can take a full breath. She pulls a boar-bristle brush through my long blonde hair, and comments on how I seem distracted. I simply shrug in return. Mina is one of my ladies, but I generally consider her a friend. Given any other circumstance I would confide in her what I was feeling. The trouble is, I’m not sure what I’m feeling at all. 

I sink into my feather bed, thoughts still consumed with the prisoner. I wonder what the beds in the dungeon are like. I wonder if they have beds at all. I toss and turn for hours, trying desperately not to think of him, and thinking of nothing else.

\--

I wake in the morning after a long night of uneasy sleep. As the cold light of morning pushes through my curtains, I remember one scene from the dreams that plagued me all night long.

 

 

The brown-eyed boy is beside me, a bloodied sword is swinging in my hand, and all around us, the countryside is engulfed in flames.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's Chapter 2! I'm hoping to make this close to 50K (yikes.) so count on something around 12 chapters. Things will get exciting (and smutty) y'all! (but also be warned, I love me a good slow burn.) 
> 
> This fandom is massive and intimidating, so thank you for the warm welcome you all gave me for chapter one. Let me know what you think! (seriously though, comments fill me with unimaginable joy).

I lay in bed for a long while, thinking of the boy’s dark eyes and the way the flames in my dream danced in them. Every time I close my eyes I see it; he and I side by side, looking like the harbingers of death, smoke billowing around us, cloaking us in darkness. 

It shakes me to my very core.

I request lunch in my quarters, and busy myself with a canvas and paints, anything to get my mind off of dark dreams, the rebellion, and the boy currently imprisoned floors below me. My efforts are in vain, though. The colors come out muddled and dull, the overall image is one dimensional and disappointing. I throw it off to the side of the room, making a mental note to cover the whole thing and start again once the paint is dry. 

I think seriously about requesting dinner alone too, not really feeling up to facing anyone, but I know that will bring with it a visit from my mother and the court physician, and it just isn’t worth the hassle. I ask Mina and Charlotte, another of my ladies, to help me dress for dinner. 

Mina picks out a truly lovely sky blue silk gown that looks cheery and optimistic. I almost laugh, it couldn’t be in further contrast to my stormy mood. I wonder if Mina chose it specifically to cheer me up. 

I step out of my lighter day dress and into the heavy blue silks of the evening gown. Mina tightens the laces and does the buttons up my back while Charlotte winds my hair into something interesting at the back of my head.

I fiddle with a strand of pearls around my neck and try to ignore the crushing emptiness inside. 

I am tired of wasting my days away like my mother did when she was a princess, just like her grandmother did before her. I am tired lavish dinners while the rest of the country rations. I am tired of doing nothing, learning nothing, being _nothing_. This isn’t what my father would have wanted, for me or for our country. 

Before his death, he treated me like the successor I was. I spent my childhood playing with wooden horses in the throne room, hugging his knees as he discussed strategy with top advisers, and playing chess with him until the candles burned down to stubs and my poor governess had to drag me off the bed. 

But now he’s gone and I’ve been locked away like a prisoner in my own home. My mother loves me in her own way, but she has always loved her crown more. The thought of me one day ruling the Aircan never seems to cross her mind, and she doesn’t quite know what to do with me now that my dad is gone.

My soul, my spirit, my strength, lives inside me like a caged animal, pacing the walls and clawing at the floor, the desperation to get out growing by the day. 

\-- 

I descend the stairs to dinner slowly, lifting each foot deliberately, as if it was encased in quick sand, but I know no amount of dawdling can save me from whatever fresh hell awaits me in the dining room. 

I finally skulk into the room, my prolonged walk having done nothing to alleviate my terrible mood, and I’m greeted with an unwelcome sight. 

My mother is sitting at the head of the table, gold crown perched atop her regal head, dressed in red velvet, looking serene and beautiful. A glance to her right makes the reason for her formal appearance clear. Seated next to her is Duke Marcus Kane, my mother’s suitor. He didn’t even wait until my father was cold in his grave before he came knocking at our door. He controls vast swathes of land and even more money. He’s known my mother since they were children, a fact he brings up often, as if it makes his motives less obvious. My mother, ever cognizant of the rules of proper society waited an appropriate mourning period, but finally time ran out. She announced their engagement four months ago. I ran to my room and threw up. 

Next to Kane is my father’s former hand, and current chief political advisor Lord Jaha. Seated next to him is his son Wells. He’s a nice boy, and we’ve always shared a genuine friendship, but his crush on me, as well as his father’s political motivations for encouraging his son’s crush have become increasingly obvious, so I’ve been limiting our time together. 

Around the rest of the table are various other members of nobility, jewels around their necks and feathers in their hair. A part of me wants to throw the over cooked goose in the middle of the table to the floor and scream, “This is disgusting, people are starving!” But that would hardly do anyone any good, and I’ve been trained to play my part in this circus too well. 

I take my seat, exchange a few pleasantries, and then do my best to tune out the mindless chatter around me. 

A single blonde tendril tickles my neck and I think about taking my butter knife and hacking it off right here at the table, or better yet just stabbing myself in the leg. Anything to get myself out of Jaha and Kane muttering about strategy and grain production. We will be here for hours. Never in the history of Aircan have there been two men who love the sound of their own voices more.

I pick at the cold goose and pickled vegetables on my plate. I’m sure I look like a dejected pouty child. I do my best to make eye contact and nod along with conversations I’m not listening to, but I don’t think that anyone is buying my act.

After what seems like an eternity my mother rises gracefully from the table and suggests we all retire to the sitting room. 

I sigh, relieved. My night is not yet over, but it is winding down, and in the sitting room I can find a nice corner in which to be alone. 

I follow the group to the sitting room and settle myself in a stiff brocade chair, praying no one follows me.

My prayers are not answered. 

Wells takes a seat across from me, and offers me a small smile. “What’s wrong?” he asks gently. 

“Nothing.” I reply. I wish I knew myself.

“So, everything then?” he laughs.

I can’t help but return his easy smile “yes,” I reply “everything” 

“Come on” he says “I’ll let you beat me at chess” 

“Oh, you’ll let me beat you? How generous” I reply, mocking him. Wells is a good sport, but he’s a truly dreadful chess player. He’s good company though, and I much prefer playing chess with him in a quiet corner than joining whatever the nobles are getting up in the center of the room. It looks like some sort of dice game from here, but most of them are falling over drunk, so I suspect they may not even know themselves.

Wells and I play three games before my mother nods at me from across the room, my permission to retire to my room for the night.

“Thank you for saving me” I say to Wells, standing up and smoothing my skirt, eager to return to my rooms.

“Oh Clarke” he laughs, “You’ve never needed anyone to save you.”

\--

His words echo in my head as I climb the stairs to my chambers. I hope he is right.

I say little as my ladies untie my corsets, freeing me from my heavy gown. They unpin my hair and it falls, cascading across my shoulders. I step into my white chemise and slide into bed obediently.

I lay there for a few minutes, quieting my breathing and formulating my plan.

I need to go see the prisoner. I suspect I’ll never be able to sleep again until I do.

There is one guard outside of my door, but I’ve known Jones since I was a child and he won’t suspect a thing. After that, it will be easy to slip through the castle unnoticed, especially at this time of night.

I slide out of bed, taking a sharp intake of breath as my bare feet touch the cold flagstone floor. 

I slide into a pair of soft leather slippers and wrap a dressing grown around myself. My dresses are too complicated to get into by myself, and it would blow my cover anyway.

I see myself, illuminated by silver moonlight, reflected in the looking glass above my vanity. I look pale and small. Fragile. I look fragile. 

I do not feel fragile. 

I creep quietly to the door leading to my bedroom, hoping desperately that Jones will be asleep.

I am not so lucky, he is standing, sword by his side, as alert as ever.

“Your highness.” He gasps. I’ve startled him. “Is anything the matter?” he asks.

“No, of course not, Jones” I say calmly, praying he doesn’t hear the quiver in my voice. “I just need a glass of water is all” I lie, hoping he won’t ask any questions.

“Of course, your highness, let me get one for you” he starts to walk away. 

“No, no” I stop him “That will hardly be necessary. I think a walk down to the kitchens is exactly what I need to clear my head. Nightmares, you know” I say with a casual wave of my hand. At least I’m not lying about the nightmares. 

“Okay, your highness” he replies. He sounds cautious, like perhaps he didn’t buy my story after all, but he’s not in a position to question me, so I breeze past him and begin making my way down the stairs. 

I wind through torch lit corridors, the smell of wet stone hanging heavy in the air around me. My feet pad quietly across the stone floors and I try to control my ragged breathing.

He will be in chains, and I am in a castle full of hundreds of armed guards at my beck and call, but still, I am afraid.

I find the right staircase, one I’ve never been down before, and I climb down and down, deep below the castle. The air down here feels thicker, and the torches burn low and hot. The scent turns from that of must to that of human misery the deeper I go.

Three flights down I begin to hear them. The screaming and moaning is almost enough to make me stop in my tracks, turn on my heel, and return to my warm bed, but I will myself to be brave and press on. The human voices and clinking of chains only grows louder. 

Eight flights down, I reach a barred door. There is a man stilling on a small wooden stool, cleaning under his filthy nails with a silver dagger.

“What do you want?” he spits in a croaking voice, not bothering to look up from his task.

“I want you to let me in,” I demand. I sound braver than I feel. I’m grateful for it.

At the sound of a female voice he his lifts his eyes, they widen in surprise, taking in the sight of me. A teenage girl in a dressing gown here in a dungeon in the middle of the night is clearly not something he usually encounters.

“This is no place for little girls” he leers.

“Then it’s a good thing I’m not a little girl,” I counter. “I’m the crown princess of Aircan. This is my dungeon, and I demand you step aside” I say.

Without another word he pulls out a massive ring of keys, searches for a moment, then plunges it into the lock and turns.

The heavy door swings open with a mighty creak and I step inside.

The corridors are lit with even more torches, but the floor here is simple dirt. The bars of the cells that line the walls cast long shadows against the stone walls. 

I begin to walk slowly through the dungeon. Most of the prisoners are asleep, huddled around themselves in heaps in the corers. Most of the cells hold at least three people. 

It smells like urine and sweat. I feel it in my throat and it is enough to make me gag.

A greasy haired man with a dirty faced leers at me as I walk past his cell. I hear someone whistle, but I don’t see where it comes from.

I hug my dressing gown around me tighter.

I turn a corner and start walking down yet another row of cells, peeking quickly into each one, trying to find the boy I’m looking for. 

I begin to worry that he has already been killed. The castle guards don’t take too kindly to traitors and rebels. 

Just as panic starts to set in, I find him. 

He’s in a cell alone, the first one I’ve seen.

His back is against the back wall, the firelight casting long shadows across his face. He’s fifthly, face still streaked with dirt, the cut across his sharp cheekbone still oozing blood. His dark hair is greasy and hangs limply across his forehead. His hands are still chained in front of him. 

But he’s awake. He’s wide-awake and staring at me like he’s been waiting for me. 

I stare back for a moment, stricken.

“Hello princess” he says, breaking the silence. “I was wondering when you would come to see me” his tone is mocking. He hates me. 

“Your cut is infected” is all I manage in return. The sound of my own voice startles me.

Before my father died, he though it was important that I begin to learn a trade, just like I would if I was a normal girl out in a village somewhere instead of a princess. I chose healing. The power to help the sick and hurting soothed my soul and gave me purpose. My mother’s pet projects have always been hospitals and medicine, and the pride in her eyes as she watched me tend to kitchen burns and minor scrapes only increased my love for the practice. For the first time in my life, I felt like she was finally proud of me.

After my father died I stopped my lessons. I found healing others wounds did nothing to soothe my own.

But here, with this boy in front of me, all my training comes flooding back. In filthy conditions like this, a single bad infection could kill him.

I walk away without another word, making my way down one hall and then another. I finally find what I’m looking for; the guards’ quarters.

The few that are still awake stare at me, wide eyed, as I barrel into the room and being searching through cabinets and shelves. I grab a bottle of whiskey, a roll of bandages, a canteen of water and some salve. I march back out as quickly as I came in.

I find the boy’s cell again without trouble, and he stares at me, eyebrows raised, as I demand a guard open his cell.

“Your majesty, I can’t do that” he replies, confused. “This man is dangerous.”

I look him square in the eye and reply “I demand you open this cell. I will not ask you again. That is, unless you’d like to join him?”

He looks at me like I’m crazy, and then does as he’s told. The boy’s cell doors slide back with the grinding sound of metal against stone. 

“I’ll be right here if you need anything” the guard says, returning his ring of keys to his belt. 

I take a step into the cell. The prisoner, still resting against the back wall, doesn’t stir, but his eyes have not left me. 

I kneel in front of him, inspecting his wound. It is swollen and red, already in the early stages of infection. Without a word I pick up the canteen, and soak a bandage in water. I wipe away the dirt around the wound and some across the bridge of his nose for good measure. 

He has freckles. 

This small detail takes me aback, but I redirect my focus to my work. Now is not the time for distractions, Clarke.

  
I then take the whiskey bottle and splash some across his cheek. I set it down beside him, and he picks it up and takes a swig.

I then take the tin of salve and dab some, gently, across the wound before wrapping it in a layer of clean bandages. It isn’t perfect but it will have to do. 

I pull back, away from his cheek, and I find him staring at me. Brown eyes boring into mine just like they did in the throne room.

“Why did you do that?” he asks quietly.

“An infection could kill you.” I reply, simply.

He laughs a small sad laugh “You do know they’re going to execute me, right?”

Oh. I had forgotten about that.

“You’re going to get a trial” I reply lamely. We both know how that trial is going to end.

“Thanks anyway, princess” he replies with a roll of his eyes. I don’t like the way he says “princess,” like it tastes bad in his mouth.

I rise to my feet, and begin to walk across the dirt floor. 

“Bellamy” he says from behind me.

I stop in my tracks, but don’t turn around.

“My name is Bellamy” he speaks once more. 

My heart is hammering in my chest. My body frozen in place.

“Clarke” I whisper, my back still to him. “My name is Clarke.” 

I take a deep breath and walk out of the cell without looking back. I hear it clang closed behind me, the guard locking the heavy lock once more. 

I race up the stairs, through the cold damp air, and back through the halls to my warm bed.

Jones gives me a look as I return to my chambers. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Majesty,” he says

“Yeah.” Is the only thing I manage to whisper in return.

I kick off my soft leather slippers and sink into my feather bed, heart still beating fast. 

The name Bellamy hums through my veins, punctuated by each hammering heartbeat.

I try to breath deeply, to calm myself enough to fall asleep. Finally the adrenaline runs its course, leaving me spent.

My heartbeat slows, and my eyes and limbs grow heavy.

I have one last thought before being pulled under “I didn’t ask him if he knew who killed my father.”

\--

That night I dream of silver daggers, chess pieces, and a sharp nose adorned with a spray of freckles.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After massive writer's block, and a bunch of time spent on something original, I've decided to return to this fic! Sorry for the hiatus, I'm the worst and I hope you forgive me. I'm still hoping to update every week or two and I'm sure all of the season 3 feels (!!!) will provide me with plenty of inspiration.
> 
> Happy New Year, y'all!

My next days pass in a haze of discontent and confusion. My lack of sleep is likely to blame. Every time I lay in my warm feather bed, images of him, stories below me, sleeping on a cold stone floor flood my mind. I wonder if his infection has gotten worse. I wonder when my mother will sentence him to die.

I wonder why I care so much, and that is, perhaps, the most troubling question of all. 

I’m picking at a rubbery piece of egg one morning, when my mother finally slams her hands down on the breakfast table and demands an explanation. 

“Enough Clarke. What is it?” 

I start, placing my fork down next to my uneaten food.

“What?” I respond, and my voice cracks from disuse.

“You haven’t been yourself. You guards tell me you haven’t been sleeping” 

“Glad to know you’re having me spied on”

“They’re worried about you, Clarke, as am I”

“Nothing to be worried about. I have a cold is all” I respond, scrambling for an excuse that won’t cause suspicion. I can’t imagine what she would say were I to tell her the truth. 

“Let me call for the physician” 

“No! No.” I reply a little too forcefully. 

“Does this have anything to do with Wells? Counselor Jaha told me the boy has spoken to him about making a match between the two of you. It’s impossible of course, impractical…But still, he cares for you deeply. Have you two had a fight?”

“Skies, no.” I respond annoyed, leave it to my mother to assume any and all bad moods are the fault of a boy. 

I push away from the table, standing and smoothing the heavy silks of my skirts. 

“I think I need some fresh air is all. If you need me I’ll be in the stables”

I march through the castle halls, furious at my mother, and even more furious at the stirring in the stomach that refuses to leave, the images in my head of the boy’s face, covered by shadows, illuminated only by the torchlight of the cell. 

I had no intention of actually going to the stables, but I have nothing better to do, and maybe some fresh air will actually do me good. 

I leave the castle through a series of tunnels I learned long ago, to avoid a guard trailing me outside. 

The early fall air is crisp with the promise of cooler weather and the rolling black clouds on the horizon speak of a storm to come. 

I have an hour, maybe two, before they dump rain over the countryside around me turning it into a sea of mud. 

I walk a short distance over the rolling green hills to the stables on the east side of the grounds.

The heady smell of animals and work being done reminds me of the hours I spent down here as a child with my father. He bought me my own horse, a mare I called Juniper, for my 8th birthday. Oh I loved her. I rode her almost every day until I was 13, my father by my side. As a teenager my attentions were occupied with activities I deemed more important.

After my father died, seeing Juniper seemed to bring my more pain than joy, but still, it was a way to feel close to him, so I’ve been spending more time down here the past year. It is also an easy way to escape the monotony of the castle, and certain…distractions have their perks. 

I push the stable doors open with a mighty creek and step into the cavernous room. Sunlight falls in stripes over the floor, streaming in from the slatted walls and horses whinny greetings.

“Hello, Clarke” a low voice greets me from the shadows.

He closes the space between us in two large steps, shoving me up against a stable door and crushing his mouth to mine. 

He kisses me in a frenzy, like he didn’t just see me last week. Like we haven’t been doing this for months.

His hand grasps at my hip, the other winding its way through the untamed hair at the nape of my neck.

I pull back, sucking in a breath.

“Finn” I gasp. 

“Clarke” he murmurs against my neck.

“Stop, stop” I say, pushing him away, ignoring the hurt in his eyes. “someone could see” 

“I’m the only one here”

“That’s what you said last week, and then the kitchen boy walked in”

“He didn’t see anything” 

“Not the point!”

He was getting too reckless, too comfortable with our arrangement. Finn’s a stable hand, and would lose his job if anyone found out about our trysts. He’d be lucky if his job was the only thing he lost. 

It began a few months ago,

I had taken Juniper for a long ride, and in an attempt to distance myself from my own pain, I rode her too long and too fast. I noticed she was limping, picking up her front right hoof in a funny way on our way back to the stables. I walked her back the rest of the way, and by the time we’d gotten there, I was in tears, certain I’d done something to hurt her, certain I was going to lose this last connection to my father.

Finn met me at the door, his long dark hair falling around his kind face. He brushed tears from my face, then looked at Juniper’s hoof. There was something stuck in her shoe, but she would be fine. 

In my relief and desperation to feel something, _anything_ again, I kissed him in the low light of the barn.

He smelled like hay and hard work. 

He paused in shock, and I was certain for a moment he was going to push me away. 

But he didn’t.

He pushed me up against a stable door and kissed me until my lips were bruised and whispered to me how beautiful I was and how desperately he wanted me.

And now it’s been months and I can’t seem to stop. But I should, I really should.

Last week he told me he loved me. I walked away without a response. I’m hoping he doesn’t make the same declaration again.

He kisses me again, and I push him away in a gesture I hope he sees as playful instead of hurtful.

“Saddle up Juniper, please. Sometimes I actually do come down here because I want to ride my horse” 

He gives me a salacious glance, and then walks across the barn to grab the gleaming brown leather saddle.

He makes quick work of it, his deft hands preparing reins and bits. He leads her out of the stables and I follow.

He helps me up, though I’ve been riding since I could walk and hardly need the assistance. It’s a poorly veiled excuse to grab my backside, but I don’t say anything about it because it’s not worth the conversation that will follow.

I push Juniper into a trot, then a canter, and soon I am flying over the gentle hills of the grounds. We run from the black clouds on the horizon, the boy in the stables, the misery of the castle. For the first time in weeks, my mind no longer feels like it is going to burst through my skull.

We ride for what feels like hours, until I find we can’t outrun the storm forever. The clouds settle over the grounds and dump cold rain, the kind with the massive drops that fall in your eyes and soak through your clothes in a matter of minutes.

Juniper and I canter back to the stables, my hair flying in a tangled wet mess behind me, her hooves sinking into the wet ground. It feels something like being alive.

Finn is waiting for me, his faced lined with worry.

“I thought you’d gotten caught in the storm! I thought I was going to have to come find you!” he yells over the crack of thunder.

“I’m fine” I laugh a little, dismounting and wringing out my hair.

He leads Juniper into the stables and I follow.

He puts Juniper in her pen, and grabs me a cloak, his I think, from a bench covered with tack.

“You’ll catch a cold if you stay in those wet clothes” he says with a wink.

I wrap the cloak around myself, grateful for the warmth, but don’t respond to his poor attempts at flirting.

“I should go” I say. My toes are freezing in my boots and I fear what Finn will say if I stay here with him, trapped by the storm.

“You can’t go out in weather like this” he says, “you’ll freeze to death…or drown”

“It’s not a long walk and I know how to swim” I respond, pulling the cloak around my tighter.

“Please, stay. I’ll walk you back when the rain has stopped.”

“That would be highly inappropriate. I’ll see you later!” I call over my shoulder, walking out of the barn, ignoring his continued pleas for me to stay.

The walk back to the castle is miserable and freezing. In soaking wet clothes and mud up to my ankles, the rain is considerably less exciting.

I breathe a sigh of relief when I reach a service entrance on the far side of the castle, the entrance to the tunnels that will lead me back up to my quarters.

I’m weaving my way through hidden halls when I’m startled by two voices, speaking in hushed tones.

I pause, trying to ascertain where in the castle I am. These tunnels are ancient and weave paths through almost every room.

I turn down another tunnel, one I think that will lead me to a spot behind a wall in the library.

The voices get louder.

It’s Jaha and Kane, I would recognize their smug, self congratulatory voices anywhere.

“The soldiers have their orders, then?” Jaha asks.

“Yes, just the women and children. Execute them publicly. Leave the men be, let them see the consequences their actions have” Kane replies.

“The lords will be pleased. They’ve had a difficult time convincing the villagers to tend to their fields”

“Once we’ve taken care of their families, they’ll have fewer distractions” Kane laughs darkly.

“Perfect” Jaha responds. “Send the troops out tomorrow. Tell them to leave the bodies out for at least a week. Any man who attempts to take them down will be tortured in the village square.”

My blood runs cold. They’re planning on murdering women and children? I have more of a reason to hate the rebels more than anyone, but to kill their families? Their wives and children who are innocent? It’s barbaric. It’s monstrous.

Surely, they’re doing this behind my mother’s back. Surely, she hasn’t approved this.

I run through the tunnels, dragging my soaking wet skirts behind me, and exit near the throne room.

My mother is there, discussing something banal with a women with peacock feathers in her hair.

“I need a minute alone with you” I demand.

“Clarke!” my mother starts, “Why on earth do you look like a drowned rat”

“A moment, please” I state again.

The women with the feathers rolls her eyes a bit, and exits out the front of the room, looking supremely annoyed at my interruption.

“Are you killing children?” I gasp.

“What on earth are you talking about, Clarke? Where have you been?”

“Are you killing children?” I ask once more “I heard Jaha and Kane talking about executing women and children. Is it true?”

“Oh Clarke.” My mother sighs, like I’m a child who couldn’t possibly understand. “The realities of war are something I had hoped to shield you from.”

“So it is true?” I respond, recoiling in horror.

“I can’t say. I trust Jaha and Kane to do what they see fit.”

“Like killing women and children? Why not punish the rebels themselves?”

“Then who would harvest the crops? Who would serve the lords?” she says simply, like all of this makes sense.

“There has to be a better way than _this_ ” I yell.

“This is nothing that concerns you and I am done discussing it. Please go ready yourself for dinner. Jaha and Kane will be joining us” she says coolly.

I stare at her in horror for a moment, then exit the room.

I have to know the truth of what is happening in the villages.

And I know whom I have to see.

 --

The stairs down to the dungeons are thick will the smell of mud and rain, and the cold drafts make me shiver in my still-wet dress.

The guard posted at the entrance to the dungeons is the same from a week ago and this time he let’s me pass without a word. Smart man.

Again, the prisoners yell horrible things at me as I pass them, hollering and banging on the bars of their cells like rabid dogs in cages.

I wind my way through the labyrinth of the prison until I find his cell.

Like the last time, he’s sitting up against the back wall, eyes narrow and looking at me like he’d known I would come.

“Princess.” He greets me, unmoving.

“Bellamy” I reply, but his name feels funny in my mouth, it sticks in my throat like honey. And I realize that, despite that fact it has rung through my head like a mantra for days, it is the first time I have spoken it aloud.

“Any chance you can get me more of that whiskey?” he quips.

I walk to the guards’ quarters ignoring their preying eyes and the few who are brave enough to whistle at me, not recognizing who I am.

I grab the bottle of whiskey and a loaf of bread. I’m sure they’re not feeding him enough down here.

I make my way back to his cell and demand the roaming guard open it. He looks at me like I’m crazy, then does it without further protest. He’s right. I’m probably crazy.

I hand Bellamy the bottle and sit down on the stone floor next to him. We're almost touching. He could kill me right here if he wanted. 

He reaches his hand over and picks up a strand of my waterlogged hair, rolling it between his fingers. My heart stutters. 

“What happened to you?” he asks

“Got caught in the rain”

“Hm” is his only reply. 

I pass him the loaf of bread, still wrapped in cloth and sitting on my lap. 

“Eat this”

He picks it up and starts ripping off large chunks without protest. He must be very hungry. The thought makes me uncomfortable. 

“I need to ask you something” I start. My voice sounds scared. Perhaps I am scared. Of Bellamy. Or of what I’m about to find out.

“I figured as much” he says through a mouthful of bread. 

“What’s happening in the villages…what I mean to say is…I heard my mother’s advisers talking today about killing women and children…publicly”

“That’s a new low” he sighs, though he doesn’t sound surprised.

“So it’s true?” 

“It sounds like something they’d do. In my village they took away our rations, they doubled our work day. When we were too weak to work they sent soldiers into the village. They raped my mother.”

It feels as if the air has been sucked out of the room.

He stares ahead, still chewing. 

“I’m sorry” I breathe. It sounds so inadequate.” Surely the commanders did something, surely they didn’t let the soldiers get away with it.”

“It was the commanders who did it. Went door to door. Every woman they could find. We hid my little sister under the floorboards before they made it to our house.”

“Bellamy” I sigh, tears springing to my eyes, but I won’t cry for him. I know he wouldn’t want me to.

“We were lucky they didn’t kill us. Plenty of the other families weren’t so lucky. They hanged suspected conspirators in the town square and wouldn’t let us take down the bodies until the vultures had eaten their eyes.”

“I didn’t know.” I say, as if it makes anything better.

“Doesn’t matter.” He replies, taking another bite of the crusty loaf of bread. 

“Of course it matters, they can’t get away with this” my heart pounds with fury.

“Of course they can, Princess” he smirks, but it doesn’t touch his eyes.

“Is that why you joined the rebels?” I ask.

He pauses for a moment, taking a slug of the bottle of whiskey.

His hands are large, with dirt caked under the nails of his elegant fingers. He runs them through his too-long dark hair and sighs.

“Did they send you down here to get a confession out of me? I’m not stupid. I’m not telling you anything, Princess.”

“No-no” I sputter “that’s not it at all, I only want to know the truth.”

“I appreciate the whiskey, but it will take more than a meal and some pretty glances to get me to tell you anything.”

He called me pretty. He called a single crusted piece of bread a meal.

My heart pounds in my chest.

“I’m sorry” I whisper, but I’m not sure what for. For the soldiers, wearing uniforms emblazoned with my family seal, who assaulted his mother. For state of the villages. For this prison cell. For not leaving him alone.

“Me too, Princess” he replies quietly.

I stand, smoothing out my dress, and gathering my mess of hair over my shoulder. 

His eyes track me as I walk towards the door.

“Princess?” he calls out as I reach the edge of the cell.

“Yes?”

“Sometimes it’s easier not to know the truth. Be careful what you go looking for. You probably won’t like what you find.” 

“Why on earth would you assume I’d think this would be easy?” I ask.

His mouth hitches in a small half smile.

“Good night, Princess.”

I return to my rooms, deeply shaken from my time in the dungeons. I tell my guards to tell my mother I’m too sick for dinner, and though I’m certain she knows I’m lying, she doesn’t fight me on it. Perhaps she’d afraid I’d confront Jaha and Kane about what I heard earlier. Perhaps she thinks I really am in fight with Wells. Regardless of her reasons I’m grateful for it. I have so much planning to do.

I eat the soup the kitchens send up and crawl into bed, dismissing my ladies and guards early. Once they are gone, I change into a simple dark dressing gown and soft leather slippers that won’t make a sound as I roam the castle at night.

I make a mental map of the tunnels that will take me to the library and war rooms. I sling a satchel around my shoulder and put an unlit candle to read by inside.

I push the tapestry that leads to the hidden passage aside and step inside quietly, praying the my guards don’t come to check on me in the night.

The tunnels are cold, and I am scared, but I think of my father and what he wanted for this country. I think of Bellamy’s mother. I think of my great-grandmother.

I will myself to be brave.

 

I’m going to find out the truth.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a little late! I started a new semester and things got a little crazy. I'm already working on chapter 5 and it should be up soon!
> 
> Thank you again for all your wonderful feedback, it fills me with indescribable joy, and I really hope you enjoy this chapter as well!
> 
> Happy season 3 premiere everyone!!

The castle is dark and damp, still smelling of the rainstorm that nearly drowned us all earlier.

The torches that dot the stone walls cast the halls in an orange glow. My long shadow and the muffled sound of my footsteps are my only company tonight, it seems, and I pray my luck holds out. 

It doesn’t take me long reach the library. Cloaked in reds and golds, with yellowing maps and pages covering every surface, this room has always reminded me of captains quarters on a merchants ship.

I’m not sure where to begin looking, so I start with the map closest to me. It shows the movement of troops, further and further into the villages of the North. This is not new information. The rebellion is spreading. Pockets of violence and disloyalty have been marked with angry Xs.

The next set of documents I pick up is a ledger book with gold lined pages detailing the movement of supplies in an out of rebelling territories. I don’t have to be an expert to see they’ve been cut off from grain and other essentials. 

I rifle through more maps, but only find more of the same. 

I make my way down the stone corridors to the war room, next. The war room exists in stark contrast to the lush library. All exposed wooden beams and cold marble, this is a room that feels like death.

The files here are better organized in cabinets that reach the ceiling. First, I find the records of my grandmother’s war, the hundred-year civil war she quelled, giving birth to the nation of Aircan. I say a silent prayer that what I’m doing will make her proud. 

The next cabinet contains the military records of 100 years of generals. Not exactly useful. 

The third cabinet is less organized and smells distinctly of fresh parchment and ink. 

Bound in leather, are pages upon pages of military strategy to beat the rebel’s guerrilla warfare. I’ve found what I’m looking for. 

The volumes record death tolls that reach up into the thousands, and lists of prisoners that stretch across volumes and into margins. 

This is nothing compared to the generals’ personal accounts.

“5.12.New Era Year 127: 18 boys caught discussing rebellion in field. All boys subject to removal of left hand.” 

“6.17.NEY 127: group of working age men not found in field during working hours. All men’s wives assaulted as punishment”

“8.2.NEY 127: 12 year old girl found bandaging wound of known dissenter. Sentenced to 24 hours in stocks”

“9.28.NEY 127: 109 radicals hanged in village square, their oldest children along with them. All bodies left to rot as visible warning” 

And on and on across pages that seem to be dripping blood. I feel it coat my hands, warm and slippery and evil. I feel the bile rise in my throat. I cannot take anymore. 

I place the volumes back into their proper cabinet; careful to place them back where I found them, despite my shaking hands. I creep through the castle and through the hidden tunnels, back up to my chamber. It is clear my guards have not come in to check on me and I am grateful. 

The moonlight pale and falls across the carpeted floor in silvery patterns and I focus on them as I remind myself how to breathe. I want to vomit. I think I might.

I crawl into my bed and lie awake all through the night, shaking, thinking of what my mother and her advisors have done. 

\-- 

The next days pass in a fog. 

I find I can’t even look at my mother during meals, and the mere thought of seeing Jaha and Kane make my stomach turn. They’re beginning to notice my foul mood and I can’t keep coming up with excuses for my absence. 

And still, ever present in the back of my mind, is the prisoner. I want desperately to see him, but can’t think of an excuse to go down into the dungeons again that won’t arouse suspicion. 

I’m painting in my room a few days after finding the documents, but I’m jumping out of my skin being locked up in here. Every time I take my brush to the canvas all I can see is a group of teenage boys without their left hands, a little girl in the stocks, 109 men hanged, their children along side them. My canvas seems to be covered in blood. Blood of the people my family is sworn to protect. 

Jones brings me my lunch on a silver tray, and I dismiss him and my ladies, saying I’d like to take an afternoon nap. They all leave without a word, as is their duty. 

I change from my blue silks into the plainest dress I own, a simple black cotton frock I wore after my father died. I tie my blonde hair back into a knot at the nape of my neck and wrap myself in Finn’s cloak, the one he wrapped around me after the rainstorm. I still haven’t been to the stables to return it to him. 

I slip into my riding boots, the sturdiest shoes I have, and take off through the castle’s tunnels. I take the route I’d usually take to go to the stables, but this time, when I make it outside, I turn right instead of left. 

I follow the rolling hills for upwards of a half an hour before I find the small dirt path that goes through the trees to the village. I only go into the village on special occasions, holidays, coronations and the like, with my mother in our royal carriage, surrounded by guards. But, I know all of those who work in the castle have to get here somehow, and I’ve heard them speak of this path before. 

It winds through the forest, and the aspens quake and whisper around me. The air is crisp and it makes me more aware. I have never before left the castle by myself, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid. 

It isn’t long before I begin to hear the noise of the village, muffled through the trees. 

The path leads me directly into the village square, a place more alive and filthy than anything I’ve seen before. 

Vendors shouting in the streets, selling their wares, horses whinny as they trot by, lead by their owners, children shout and scream as they chase each other in a game of tag. 

I walk through the square slowly, my boots squelching in the mud beneath me.

The people here look hollow-eyed and dirty. A man clutching a dusty bottled lays passed out in a doorway. A man with an arm in a sweat-stained sling stumbles past me. 

It isn’t until he passes me that I see the bodies. Strung up from stocks in the center of the square are four bodies, still swinging in their nooses. 

The gasp of revulsion that comes out of my mouth is involuntary. 

I stumble towards them. 

“Cut them down!” I yell to no one in particular. 

“You’re not from around here, are you, love?” an old woman with a gray scarf around her head asks me. 

I don’t answer, my voice is stuck in my throat. 

“These here men are dissenters. Rebels. Bodies’ll be up here for a week. Queens orders” 

“It’s barbaric” I say. It is one thing to read about it in ledger books. It is another to see it in person. In the town closest to the castle, no less. This is not something that is happening in far flung places, on the edges of the kingdom. This has reached my gates. 

Unconsciously, I step closer to the bodies, drawn to them, as if there is anything I could do now to end their suffering.

I stumble into a man, rushing off to an unknown destination, his arms full of a burlap sack of grain. He, too, stumbles as I knock into him, dropping his bag, his grain spilling all over the ground. 

“Oi Girl! Watch yourself!” he says as he picks the bag up out of the mud. Only half of the grain remains, the other half has been lost to the mud. 

“The lord will have my head for this” he whispers to himself, horrified. Then he turns on me, his eyes full of fury. “How am I supposed to feed my family! They’ll take away my rations if I show up with only this!” 

“I’m sorry!” I reply, horrified at my mistake.

“Sorry won’t feed me!” he spits back.

I don’t have any money to pay him, I’ve never dealt with money. I’ve had everything I’ve ever needed brought too me in boxes wrapped with silk ribbons. 

My mind whirs, thinking of a way to repay him, as he stares at me, his face an increasingly dark shade of red. 

My bracelet! It isn’t much, just a gold bangle, but surely that will be enough to get him through the week.

I slip it off my wrist and hand it to him. 

“Here. Take this, surely this will cover the amount.”

He stares at it, mouth agape. “Where’d you get this?”

I feel my blood quicken as the weight of my mistake settles over me.

A crowd has gathered around us.

“Hey, princess, where’d you get that?” a woman with no front teeth yells. For a moment I freeze, thinking she knows who I am, but I realize she’s just mocking me. Calling me princess as an insult like Bellamy does.

“What else do you think she got?” another man yells.

The circle of people around me begins closing in, my eyes dart, frantic, looking for escape. I feel like the fawns on the deer hunts I used to accompany my father on. I tug my cloak around me tighter, as if it will provide me with any protection.

“Hey!” a voice emerges from out of the fray. A man with arms the size of tree trunks pushes his way into the circle.

“Is this what they’ve driven us to? Robbing girls?” He demands. The mob mutters a little, but begins to scatter.

I suck in a breath of relief.

“You’d best be going, miss.” He says, voice gruff. He has a tattoo that creeps up over his shoulder and along the side of his neck. His arm is hanging a little funny, and I can tell he’s cradling it with his other hand under his cloak.

He begins to walk away.

“Wait!” I yell out after him.

He turns around silently.

“Your shoulder! I can put it back in its socket!” I call through the crowd.

He jerks his head in a “come on, then” motion. I quicken my steps and follow him.

He leads me to a small ramshackle house on the outskirts of the town square. It’s only one room, lit with a single nub of flickering candle. It’s freezing cold and the thin walls don’t offer much in the way of protection from the howling wind.

He sits down in a rickety chair placed next to an even less stable table. 

“What happened?” I ask him quietly.

“Soldiers,” he huffs. “Wife’s brother was arrested. Thought I might share his views. Wanted to teach me a lesson.”

“And do you?” I ask, taking off his cloak for him, moving his arm gently into position.

“I’ve never cared much for war of any kind. Don’t understand why people can’t seem to stop killing each other.”

“I agree,” I say with a grunt, shoving his shoulder back into position.

He doesn’t even wince.

“Why didn’t a medic set this for you?” I ask him

“The town physician left last year, conscripted into the army. We do our best to help each other, but tending to wounds inflicted by soldiers tend to get people in more trouble than it’s worth.”

“That’s horrible.”

“We make due.”

“It will be swollen for a few days. Ice it if you can and try not to use that arm.”

He barks out a laugh “That’ll make plowing the field awfully difficult.”

 “You can’t ask for a medical leave?”

 He laughs again “Just where are you from, exactly? They’d shoot me dead if I didn’t work.”

 “I’m sorry” I mutter. I’m so sorry. For so much. I’ve let this happen. I’ve been complacent. This is as much my fault as it is my mothers, and it is my responsibility to fix it.

 “Thank you,” he says. “You should get going. It’s almost dark.”

 I walk to the front door, pausing for a moment.

 “What’s your name?”

 “Lincoln.”

 “I’m Clarke.”

 “Thank you Clarke.”

 “I think I owe you a lot more than you owe me.”

 “Owe,” he laughs darkly “If only the world would stopping thinking in matters of debts paid and unpaid the world might be a kinder place.”

 “Perhaps. Still, I thank you.”

\-- 

The sun is rapidly setting on the village and I walk home through the forest, shivering with cold and the terrifying knowledge of what it is I have to do.

Things cannot stay the way they are. Bellamy and Lincoln and those people hanged in the village square deserve better. My people deserve better. My nation deserves better. I am their Princess, it is my responsibility to fix it.

I know whom I have to see.

\--

I make it into the castle undetected and go directly down to the dungeons. 

He’s hunched against the wall of his cell, and even in the low light I can see that something is wrong. 

The guards unlock his cell without protest and I rush to his side.

“Hey, Princess,” he croaks. He does not sound glad to see me. 

His left eye is an angry purple-red, mottled mess, swollen almost completely shut. 

He gasps a sharp intake of breath at the gentle pressure of my fingertips on his skin.

“They fractured your orbital bone.” I whisper. “Who did this?”

“Who do you think?” he replies, with a jerk of his head in the direction of the guards’ quarters down the hall. 

“The guards did? Why?” I ask, horrified. 

“Boredom, I think.”

“You think?” 

“They were saying things…things about you.”

“What sort of things?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters.”

“What are you going to do? Order me to tell you?”

“If I have to.” 

“Like I’d listen.” He pauses for a beat and takes a slow breath “They were saying things about your visits down here…they said they needed to teach your boyfriend a lesson” he sneers around the word boyfriend and I feel my face go red at this implications.

The guards thing Bellamy and I are _involved_. They beat him because of it. His eye is my fault. Everything is my fault.

I feel the tears well hot in my eyes and before I can stop them, they spill over, streaking down my cheeks. I bring my hand to my face to try to hide them, but Bellamy has already seen. 

“Are you crying?” he asks. He’s laughing at me. 

“Don’t you laugh at me,” I snap back. 

“You’d just think, I’m the one with a broken eye socket, sitting on a dirt floor waiting for death…and you’re the one crying? Save the dramatics for someone else, Princess.” 

He’s right and it only makes me cry harder. He has days to live here I am crying in front of him. I am despicable. 

“It’s just-“ I choke “It’s just, that it’s all my fault. The torture, the soldiers…the bodies…” I sob, remembering the empty eye sockets of the strung up men from earlier today. “It is my family’s fault. We’re supposed to protect them. I’m supposed to be a leader.”

“So be a leader,” he spits.

“What?” I hiccup turning to face him.

“Be a leader. Take your crown. Do the right thing, Clarke.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” 

“Be brave.” 

“I’m trying.”

“Do better.”

“You’re kind of an asshole, has anyone ever told you that?” I choke out a laugh. 

“Everyday, Princess, everyday.” 

“Come on, stand up” I say, rising to my feet. 

He takes my hand in his, it is solid, warm, and calloused, the kind of hand used to doing work. My heart stutters in my chest for just a beat, before he uses the leverage to pull himself to his feet. He quickly drops my hand.

He looks at me and raises an eyebrow.

“We have to fix your eye. I can’t tend to it down here. The light is too low and I don’t have the right supplies.”

“You’re taking me out of the cell?” He asks, and the moment he says it I realize how ridiculous an idea it is. Bellamy is dangerous; he crept into my castle just a week and a half ago with a sword he wouldn’t have hesitated in plunging directly into my heart.

I hesitate, weighing the risk of the situation. I need Bellamy’s help and he can’t help me if he dies of an infection. I also trust Bellamy in a way I cannot begin to understand, but I do.

“I’m taking you out of the cell. But if you make a single move to hurt me, I’ll make sure it is the last thing you ever do.”

He quicks a smile at my threat, then replies “After you, your majesty”

The cells doors slide open with a squeak but the guards are nowhere to be found. They’re likely piss drunk at this time of night. I’m beginning to think I need to reevaluate the household staff, given how easy I have been able to sneak in and out of the castle as of late. 

Bellamy follows me. 

The guard posted at the entrance to the dungeons is picking apart a crusty heel of bread with dirty fingers as we approach. Before he can say a word, I bark out “Queen’s orders," and drag Bellamy along by the chains that still bind his hands in front of him. 

The guard is too drunk or too scared of me to question us further.

Bellamy follows me through the tunnels that lead through the walls of my castle like a wraith, until we reach the surgery, a room lined with dusty vials of herbs and roll upon roll of clean bandages.

Bellamy takes a seat on a stretcher in the middle of the room, and gazes at me wordlessly as I circle the room lighting the candelabras mounted on the walls. 

I pick up a tincture in a glass vial from the wall and a clean roll of gauze.

He has an imperceptible look on his face, candlelight flickering in his dark eyes as I approach him.

Again, he gasps as I run my fingertips over the fractured segment of his eye socket. I coat the gauze in the tincture and run it over the injured broken parts.

It should stave away infection in the parts where the skin is broken and bring down the swelling. I can only hope the fracture heals completely on its own.

“Thank you,” he says, finally breaking the fragile silence between us.

“What do I do?” I ask him. He does not need to ask what I’m talking about.

“You already know exactly what you need to do, Princess,” he says, and for once he does not sneer around my title.

“Will you help me?”

“Anything,” He whispers.

My heartbeat picks up. He is close enough to strangle me, to finish the mission that brought him here, instead his eyes flicker to my lips. I take a breath.

Suddenly, the sound of armor clanking and heavy footfalls echo through the surgery, Bellamy’s head snaps to the doorway. The footsteps get closer.

“Help me,” I say to him, urgently. “Help me start a rebellion.”

“The rebellion started a long time ago, Clarke,” he laughs, springing up from the table, grabbing a heavy wool blanket from a nearby table and wrapping it around his broad shoulders. “I’m going to help you finish it.”

The shouting of castle guards gets louder. We’ve been caught. A prison guard likely tipped them off, or perhaps one of my mother’s spies. These castle walls have eyes and I was foolish to think I could get away with sneaking around uncaught for so long.

 “You have to run,” I urge him, pushing him into a hidden passageway, trusting he is smart enough to find or fight his way out.

“I’ll find you. I’ll help you,” he gasps, eyes boring into mine for one agonizing second before he turns to run down the pitch black stone passage.

The castle guards flood into the room a heartbeat after the tapestry over the passage falls, hiding it once more.

“Princess,” a guard greets me gruffly. “You’re to come with us at once.”

“I had a headache. I did not realize that was a crime” I reply in a voice I hope sounds nonchalant, despite the frantic buzzing in my brain.

The guard grabs me by the arm and drags me back up to my chambers, barking orders to those around me to keep me sequestered in my room. Queen’s orders.

The doors to my room are locked with a resounding clink. Alone in my dark room a single thought echoes through my head.

 

I will finish this revolution.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the kudos, and bookmarks, and comments. They really mean so much to me, and talking with all of you about these dummies is a big part of what makes this so fun to write. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy chapter 5!

I’m left alone in my room, locked behind the solid oak doors for 24 straight hours. No trays of food are brought, no ladies come in to dress me, no guards to check up to make sure I am okay. 24 straight hours of maddening solitude, and desperately wishing whether or not I knew if Bellamy is okay. He has to be, anything other than that is unthinkable. 

It isn’t long after the sun rises on the second day that I’m awoken by voices outside my door. 

My mother bursts in unceremoniously, a gaggle of guards and Kane at her heels.

“What on earth were you thinking?” she hurls at me, her hands balled into fists at her side. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I reply, but I cannot look her in the eye as I say it. I’ve never been a great liar. Something about my eyes seems to give me away, and my mother knows this all too well. 

“You helped a prisoner escape. You helped a _rebel_ escape. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” She asks me, face screwed up in an expression that communicates the weight of my betrayal.

I flip mentally through the options I have in front of me. I could outright deny it. Tell her I was in the surgery for headache medicine and that I don’t know how the prisoner escaped, but it is unlikely she’d believe me. No less than a dozen guards bore witness to my visits to him, and at least three saw me take him out of his cell. I can’t believe how reckless I’ve been. 

I could tell her the truth. I could tell her that I think what is going on in the villages is horrible and that it needs to stop. I could tell her that she needs to fire her advisors and begin a reconstruction program. But I see Kane hovering over her shoulder, her diamond engagement ring on her finger, and I know she’d never listen.

So my only option is to lie, and to tell my mother a story she’ll be inclined to believe. So I force my eyes to well up with tears and begin to formulate a story.

“I didn’t mean to.” I choke out through a fake sob, curling my shoulders in, willing myself to look small and young and weak.

“The prisoner-“ I continue “he looked so hungry that first day, and I felt sorry for him, so I went down into the dungeons to bring him a loaf of bread.”

My mother’s face begins to soften “You have always had your father’s big heart,” she says quietly. Kane stiffens behind her. 

“And then we got to talking, and he told me it was all a massive misunderstanding, that he would never hurt anyone.” I take a deep breath and my mother nods at me, urging me to continue. “He had come looking to get his sister a job, and got lost and went through the wrong castle entrance. He told me the palace guards found him and beat him. They planted the sword on him, because they wanted you to think they’d caught a member of the resistance. They wanted to impress you.” I finish, looking at her beseechingly, my hands fisting at my skirts. 

“Clarke, that was exceptionally foolish of you. I never would have thought you could be so naïve.”

It is working, she believes me, but I now I need to really convince her. I need to convince Kane who is still standing a step behind her looking at me through narrowed eyes.

I take a deep breath “That’s not all.”

“I suspected as much,” she replies, congratulating herself on her own brilliance. 

“The boy…the more we talked and got to know each other, the closer we got. I kept going down to visit him, I couldn’t help myself.” I recognize the truth in my words and it frightens me. _I couldn’t help myself with Bellamy_.

“And he told me I was beautiful and that he loved me.” I say quietly, my face turning red.

I feel ashamed for the way my heart rate picks up, as if any of this matters when so many people dying. But more, I feel ashamed for making Bellamy say those words to me in my imagination, because he never would in real life. He came here to kill me. I’m the princess and he hates me. He should hate me.

“Oh, Honey,” my mother says, staring at the too-real emotion evident on my face.

“And then night before last I went down to visit him, and his eye socket was broken. I was afraid of infection setting in so I took him up to the surgery to fix it.” I force out a sob. “Oh, mom. I was so stupid.” 

And finally, she crosses the room and wraps me in her arms in a way she hasn’t since I was a child. She pats my back in slow circles and whispers “it’s okay” into my hair. 

“It’s not okay!” Kane shouts from across the room. “Clarke nearly cost us all our lives with her teenage crush!” he spits. “We could try her for treason!”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” My mother snaps back. “I’m sure Clarke has learned her lesson.”

“I have, I have” I mutter through the fake tears that still stream down my cheek. I wonder if it is my exhaustion or worry for Bellamy that has made it so easy to cry.

Or perhaps I really wish that this all would go away. That my mother would hold me in her arms, and I could spend in the rest of my days in the comfort of my castle, riding horses, and painting and eating cakes.

It would certainly be easier, but it’s impossible, knowing what I now know.

“Regardless,” my mother continues “It would be deeply impractical to try my daughter for treason on the week of our wedding.” She turns to face Kane with a look on her face that say “try me again and there will be no wedding,” though I know she’s bluffing.

  _The wedding is this week_. I vaguely recall being fit for a dress a month ago, I remember helping my mother plan a menu with minimally invested interest, but I had no idea the date had come so soon. I’ve been a little distracted.

 Being able to help Bellamy and this revolution depends on being back in my mother’s good graces, which means being back in Kane and Jaha’s good graces. The thought makes my stomach turn, but still, I plaster a sweet smile on my face and turn to Kane.

 “You know how excited I am for this wedding,” I say. “You know how excited I am for the both of you. I’m so, so sorry. I’ll do anything I can to make it up to you both.” His face softens a little.

 “Just help your mother with everything she needs this week” he says with a huff. “Lord knows we all have enough trouble on our hands tracking down the escaped prisoner.”

  _Escaped. He escaped._

 Relief washes over me in waves, and for the first time in over a day it feels as if I am able to take a full breath.

  _He escaped._

 I am frightened that Jaha and Kane have patrols out looking for him, but I expected as much and I’m sure Bellamy has too. He is smart enough to hide instead of trying to fight. I have to trust that he is.

 My mother takes my hands in both of hers and says “Now let’s go get you something to eat.”

 She gestures for my ladies to dress me in a pink silk monstrosity with feathers in my hair. I accept it all silently because I need her to trust me if I am to help anyone at all.

 I follow her down to lunch where a herd of nobles have already gathered.

 I recognize a few of their names from the generals’ personal accounts.

 Lord Botwin ordered his farm hands to be whipped for not working quickly enough.

 Lady Tremblay suspected her ladies’ maid of harboring rebel sympathies and had her husband beheaded in front of her for it.

 These people are cruel. These people do not deserve the jewels around their necks and the manors in which hide from the realities of how hard it is to live in this world.

 Still, I smile like a puppet and make banal conversation over roast goose, Jaha, Kane and my mother smiling approvingly at me all the while.

 And so the week of the wedding passes like this. I play the part I have been playing all my life. It is more difficult now that I have seen the truth of this world, but I know what court expects to see from me.

\--

The morning of my mother’s wedding, Mina and my other ladies burst into my room at 6am sharp.

 They pull open the heavy curtains, but the sun still has not risen over the rolling foothills.

 “Up and at them, Miss” Mina trills. “Today is a big day.”

 She laces me into my corset and stays so tightly I cannot breathe, then dresses me in a heavy champagne colored gown adored with pearls that dot the bodice. The skirts are made of layers of silks and brocade.

 She and the ladies curl my hair around heated rods until it falls in ringlets around my shoulders. They pin it into something elaborate at the nape of my neck.

 The ordeal takes hours, and just when I’m done being poked and prodded at Kane walks into my room, striding confidently as if he already owns this castle.

 In his hand is a velvet box.

 "Your mother wanted you to have this today,” he says, approaching me.

 He flips open the box, revealing a tiara, not just any tiara, but my grandmother’s. It is evident by the tone of his voice he does not think I deserve to wear it.

 “Thank you.” I breathe.

 He hands the box to one of my ladies and makes his way to the door, leaving without another word.

 Mina places the sparkling tiara on top of my head, and sighs a little as she takes a step back to see how it looks.

 “You’re so beautiful, ma’am.”

 “Thank you,” I say, though I’m distracted and not terribly interested in how I look at the moment.

 They follow me out of my room, trailing me like a shadow, as I go to join my mother in the official wedding procession.

Typically, weddings are an affair that the nation celebrates together. When my mother and father got married almost 20 years ago, they spent two weeks traveling to each village, meeting with, and celebrating with the people. Their wedding day was marked with a parade through town and a feast for both the nobles and the townspeople.

 But with the growing rebellion, old traditions have been abandoned for safety’s sake. Today’s wedding will have a procession that crosses through the grounds to the royal chapel, and back to the castle ballroom for a feast and a ball. No townspeople have been invited.

 I meet my mother, who is standing by the castle entrance, her crown atop her head, her veil being held by no fewer than 8 ladies’ maids.

 She looks beautiful.

 I tell her so, and a smile lights up her face, and I see that she is genuinely happy. And as disgusted as I am by what she and her advisors have done, she is still my mother and I love her, so for a moment, I will allow myself to be happy too.

 We walk arm in arm across the grounds to the chapel, a host of other ladies and flower girls and god knows who else trailing behind us.

 Two guards push the doors to the chapel open to reveal Kane standing at the alter, his back to us, as is tradition.

I walk my mother down the aisle to the sounds to trumpets and strings. She squeezes my hand as we reach the alter, and I take her bouquet from her, so she can turn to take Kane’s hands in her own.

 The archbishop marries them and the smiles of joy on their faces are genuine.

I long for a world where my mother was born to a merchant in a village and we were a normal family without the weight of the welfare of a country on our shoulders.

 My mother should have been a mother, a wife, a physician. She should never have been a queen. But then, like me, she did not ask for any of this.

 I’m able to spend most of the wedding feast smiling and nodding, the weight of my tiara ever present on my head, Bellamy’s face constantly on my mind.  

The dancing begins and I do my best to blend into the walls, but it is difficult given the width of my massive champagne gown and the sparkling halo of diamonds on my head. 

Wells finds me soon enough, two goblets of wine in his hand. 

“Hey, Clarke” he says, handing me the second goblet, leaning against the wall in his finery. 

“Hey Wells,” I greet him in return, before taking a long swig. 

“I’m sorry about what happened with my dad,” he says after a pause.

My mind mentally catalogues all of the things his father has to be sorry for, but I’m not sure to which one Wells is referring.

“What do you mean?”

“About the marriage stuff,” he replies, eyes trained on the floor. I remember now, what my mother mentioned a week or two ago. Jaha spoke to her about a marriage between Wells and I. He told my mother Wells had feelings for me. 

“You don’t need to apologize, that was your dad, not you.” 

He takes another swallow of wine. “I asked him to though, I asked him to talk to your mom about it.” 

“Why on earth would you do that?” 

“You know why.” He says sadly, and it’s true. I do know why, but I’ve been ignoring it for years. Ignoring the way his eyes linger on me from across long tables. Ignoring the pages long letters he sends me when he’s away, always signed, “Yours (Always) Wells.”

“You know my mother is going to marry me off to whomever serves her the best. A foreign Prince or a rich lord.” We both know I’ve never had a choice in the matter. It wasn’t anything that ever bothered me much. It always seemed like a far-off thing. But now I’m 18 and my mother is considering her options, I’m sure. The thought of being shipped off like cattle makes me sick.

That and the fact that I can’t stop dreaming about wavy black hair and a nose sprayed with freckles.

“I know.” He says quietly, still refusing to meet my eye.

“You’re my best friend,” I say, and I hope he knows it’s true. We grew up together, and I love him. Just not, it seems, in the way he loves me.

He looks at me sadly, then walks away into the folds of the party without another word.

My heart hangs heavy in my chest at the thought of disappointing yet another person. I cannot do right by my people, my mother, or my best friend, it seems.

People twirl around the ballroom in a tornado of silks and diamonds. The orchestra reverberates off of the vaulted ceilings and glittering chandeliers. The smell of cake and alcohol float through the air, and people are laughing and smiling, filled with joy and more food than the villagers see in a month.

In the center of it all is my mother, looking radiant, draped in jewels and silks, her new husband staring at her devotedly.

I wonder if she looked this happy the day she married my dad.

Suddenly, the lights go out and the sound of an explosion and the smell of smoke reverberate through the room.

Everywhere people are screaming, running in a crush in a wasted attempt to escape an invisible threat.

My heart pounds in my chest, but I stay rooted to the floor.

A hand clamps over my mouth and over the chaos in the room, a voice whispers hot in my ear, “Hello, Princess.”

_Bellamy._

Stupid, reckless, brave Bellamy.

He’s come to get himself killed.

“What are you doing here?” I hiss back.

“I told you I’d help you, didn’t I?” he replies with a laugh in his voice. “Now come on.”

He wraps his hand around mine and begins to pull me through the pitch-black chaos.

All around me people writhe and scream, but he keeps his hand firmly wrapped around mine, pulling me forward.

I cannot see a thing, but this is my castle, and I recognize where we are going almost immediately.

I sigh in relief when I’m hit with the cool damp air and the quiet of the tunnels.

It is only then that I reach out and punch him in the arm.

“What the hell were you thinking?” I whisper, not wanting to give away our location.

“I had to get you out.” He says simply. “Now let’s go,” he says, grabbing my hand once more, despite there being no crowd to get lost in here. 

I hear footsteps coming and I freeze with fear. Bellamy must feel me tense up because he says, “don’t worry, they’re with us.”

Us. I’m a part of an us. The rebels. These tunnels must have been how they got into the castle. I can only hope I have made the right choice.

We wind through the tunnels and when we make it outside, I’m relieved to see most of the guards have abandoned their watch posts. They either went inside when they heard the chaos, or they were drunk on wedding wine before the rebels got in. 

We both pause, taking a deep breath, but I turn to him in horror. My friends are in there, my mother is in there.

“What have you done? Those people in there?” I say, frantically, waving my hands around in a way I hope communicates what it is I’m trying to say.

“Shhh, shhh, don’t worry.” He says, placing his hands on my shoulders. Here in the moonlight I can see the swelling on his eye has gone down significantly.

“This was a rescue mission only. My sister got the lights out. Lincoln’s standing guard. Raven took care of the patrolmen. No causalities.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. “Let’s go, then,” I urge pulling him along by our still joined hands, cursing my massive skirts for slowing me down.

We make our way through the forest path I took just a week ago, and into the same town I explored. It is late at night and the streets are empty.

He leads me to a ramshackle house on the outskirts of town, and I realize with a start that I’ve been here before. He said Lincoln was his lookout. Lincoln is Bellamy’s brother in law.

We’re the first to arrive, and Bellamy doesn’t bother to light any lanterns upon our arrival.

He sits down at the table with his head in his hands.

“Are you okay?” I ask him quietly.

“We’re just waiting for the others to get back,” he replies, voice strained, obviously sick with worry for his sister.

We sit in tense silence for upwards of 20 minutes when finally, the door to the house is pushed open, revealing Lincoln, the man whose shoulder I set, a tiny brunette joined to him at the hand, Bellamy’s sister, and Lincoln’s wife, I assume. And behind them is a taller girl with a bow strung over her back, her black hair in a tight ponytail. 

“Bellamy” the shorter girl breathes in a sigh of relief, launching herself across the room to wrap her brother in a hug.

“Octavia,” He says in return, before looking up to greet Lincoln and Raven.

I stand in the corner feeling like an intruder.

Raven is the first to speak to me, “Your majesty,” she says to me with a tone of sarcasm that suggests I’m not entirely welcome here.

She walks across the room to wrap Bellamy in a hug, and I wonder if they’re together. She’s beautiful and fierce. His match in every way.

I feel intensely silly standing here in a gown that takes up almost the entirely of their small kitchen, while they’re all in black work clothes. Even the girls are wearing trousers.

“So this is her then?” Octavia asks her brother with a jerk of her head towards me.

“I’m Clarke,” I say lamely. She examines me through narrowed eyes for a moment.

“My husband and brother seem to like you and that’s a good enough reason for me.”

“I really want to help.” I reply, though it sounds deeply inadequate.

“Well then,” she turns to her brother. “It looks like it’s time to teach Little Princess here how to fight.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this chapter is so late! Bellamy's story arc is garbage this season and I've been too mad at him to write (actually im p mad at the show in general this season. come rant about it with me in the comments pls.) 
> 
> buttttttt here's a little romance to make up for my long absence! hope you enjoy!

That night, we sit around the small kitchen table as Lincoln busies himself in the kitchen, eventually handing me a small bowl of bone broth and a crusty lump of bread. It reminds me of what Bellamy ate in prison, and I realize it is what the enforced rations in the villages have done to the food supply. I cannot imagine tilling a field for 10 hours after nothing but a bowl of broth, but perhaps I am too used to being treated like a precious breakable thing. 

None of them apologize for the smallness of the meal and I am grateful, I know having an extra mouth to feed is a burden. I eat only half my lump of bread and hand the rest under the table to Bellamy. He takes it without a word, his hand lingering on mine. I feel my cheeks go red and pray no one else notices. If they do they don’t let on. 

After dinner, when the stub of a candle has burned low, casting the small house in shadows, Octavia and Lincoln retire for bed, walking off hand in hand to the small bedroom just off the living room. Octavia tells me to get my rest, as she’ll be training me tomorrow. He words are barbed but her eyes have a hint of a smile. She reminds me of the portraits I’ve seen of my great-grandmother. All sharp edges hiding the bleeding heart underneath.

Raven leaves soon after, Bellamy offers to walk her home, but she refuses, further confusing me about the state of their relationship. 

She walks out the door, leaving Bellamy and I completely alone for the first time. Both of us seem to realize it at the same time, and the air feels like it has been sucked out of the room. Beneath my skin, my blood thrums, and part of me welcomes it, this _feeling_ , because it feels like so long since I’ve felt much of anything. Another part of me wants to stomp it into the ground, to bury it because we have so many more important things to worry about. His dark eyes peer up at me through his lashes, and my heart hammers in my chest. A muscle in his sharp jaw twitches, like he too is biting down words.

“Thank you for saving me, tonight.” I finally say, my voice cracking a little from disuse.

“Don’t mention it,” he replies, but he still has that look in his eyes that makes me feel like that wasn’t what he wants to say. 

He pushes his chair a little closer to mine, and it squeaks against the unfinished wood floors. He pushes forward until our knees are touching. 

He leans forward on his elbow, and I realize I could kiss him if I wanted to. Do I want do? Does what I want matter at all? 

“Clarke-“ he says.

My mouth twitches a smile.

“What?” he demands.

“You called me Clarke.”

“That’s your name?” he replies, heavy brows knit together in confusion. 

“You usually call me Princess.” 

“Yeah well,” he sighs, “I don’t know if you’ll be too welcome in the castle after tonight.. Princess hardly seems appropriate.”

and I know he’s joking, but it still stings. I don’t know if the gravity of what I have done has hit me. I walked out on my people, my mother. I love my mother. _What have I done_?

Tears spring hot to my eyes, and I wipe them away quickly with the back of my hand.

“Oh no, Clarke, I didn’t mean-“ he replies, alarmed at my emotional outburst.

“What have I done?” I whisper to no one in particular.

“Hey, hey. Come on, Princess.” He takes one of my hands, the one that isn’t wiping the tears from my face, and envelopes it in both of his. They are warm and rough.

“We’re doing the right thing.” He says. He sounds so sure. What I wouldn’t give to be that sure of anything.

“People are going to die” I choke out, finally vocalizing my worst fear. People are going to die and it is going to be because of choices I made.

“Clarke, people are dying already.”

“I know that, but they aren’t dying because of me.”

“They’re dying because you do nothing. You can stop this, you know you can. You’re going to save your people.”

“I don’t know if I can.” I gasp, unable to meet his eyes. He squeezes my hand.

“I know you can.”

He stands, pulling me up with him. We were sitting so close that when we stand my body is pressed against his. His long arms envelop me in a hug and I feel safe in a way I haven’t since my father was taken from me. It feels something like coming home.

We stand for a moment, arms wrapped around each other, my head resting on his chest, our hearts beating in unison. He lowers his head and presses a kiss to the top of my head. 

I close my eyes and lean into the warmth of his body.

After a too-short moment his voice breaks the fragile moment.

“You need your sleep.”

I have no response because I know he’s right. I untangle my arms from his, looking around the small house.

In the living room there is a small couch, too short for either of us to sleep on, and a cot pressed up against the wall, Bellamy’s I assume.

Bellamy walks to a small wardrobe on the other side of the room, pulls out a folded square of fabric and hands it to me.

It’s one of his shirts, I realize. I stare at it confused.

“Unless you’d like to sleep in that?” he gestures to my opulent gown.

Oh. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself. I have no idea how I am supposed to extract myself from my dress, it typically takes no fewer than three ladies maids to free me. 

“I-“ I stutter, unsure of how to ask for help. “I can’t get out of it myself.”

“Oh, I could get Octavia…” he trails off, knowing very well he can’t go get Octavia. I don’t know his sister, but I can’t imagine she’d take kindly to being woken up to undress a princess.

“No, No,” I reply at the same time he says “or I could help.” He can’t look me in the eye. 

“Please?”

The air in the room is heavy as he walks around to my back. He pauses in the space of a heartbeat before I feel his fingers trail over the buttons that run up the length of my spine.

“How do I?” he trails off.

“Um, just start with the buttons.”

His fingers move slowly at first, undoing each button deliberately, so unlike the flying hands of my ladies who make quick work of my clothing.

He undoes the final button at the small of my back and I shrug out of the bodice of my gown, leaving my corset and chemise exposed.

“The skirts next,” I direct him a little sheepishly.

Again, his fingers move slowly, tugging on the laces that hold my massive skirts in place.

With a final tug, my skirts fall around me in a heap.

The panniers are next, giant wine under things that hold my skirts in shape.

He barks out a laugh.

“What in the hell are those?”

“Just help me out of them,” I sigh.

He unbuckles where they attach around my hips and I step out of those as well.

I’m left in nothing but my corset and chemise. I can feel his eyes on me.

He hesitates.

“Corset next,” I direct him, praying he doesn’t notice how red my chest is turning or how my breathing has picked up.

I feel his fingers reach for the laces undoing them in deft movements. He tugs a little loosening the corset and I suck in a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

My corset hangs loose around my rib cage, and I feel Bellamy pause for a moment before trailing a long finger up the length of my spine, exposed but for the thin layer of cotton covering it.

My heart stutters a beat, my cheeks are flaming, I close my eyes, reveling in just how much I want him to touch me. To touch me more, to touch me everywhere.

The crack of a door being swung open makes us both jump.

Octavia barrels out of her room, her hair loose, in sleep clothes, then pauses to look at us both, her head cocked knowingly.

“Needed a glass of water.” She says after a moment. “Get to sleep, busy day tomorrow.”

She disappears back into her own room swiftly, but the moment is broken. I slip Bellamy’s shirt on over my chemise, then slip my chemise off from under it. It feels so intimate to be wearing his clothing. I wonder what he thinks seeing me wear it.

“You can have the cot,” he says to me.

"There’s no way you’ll fit on that,” I gesture to the love seat against the other wall.

“You won’t either. I can’t possibly let a Princess sleep on the floor.”

“Go to hell.” I respond with a small laugh.

“Sleep on the damn cot, Clarke.”

“You know no one speaks to me like that, don’t you?”

“Yeah, well, maybe they should.” 

Without further argument I slide into the warn flannel sheets of the cot. I didn’t realize just how exhausted I was. Still, the cool spring air leeches in through the thin wood of the walls and I have to curl around myself to keep warm. 

Bellamy grabs a pillow and a few cushions from the couch and lays out on the floor.

I shoot him a look.

“It beats the dungeon by miles.”

 “I can’t let you sleep on the floor.”

“You’re not letting me do anything, I’m perfectly capable of making my own decisions.”

“I’m freezing.”

“Sorry this isn’t a castle, Princess.” He quips. 

“No, no, I only meant…well…it would be warmer…” 

He raises an eyebrow.

“It’s only practical.” I finish lamely.

“Practical.” He echoes, rising to his feet. 

He slides into bed next to me, the cot bowing a little under the weight of our combined bodies.

He tucks pillow under his head and turns to face the wall, still the cot is so small there is not a place where his body is not pressed up against mine.

“Good night, Princess.”

“Good night, Bellamy”

And despite the thrumming in my veins at the closeness of his body, I sink quickly into a dreamless sleep, and rest better than I have in years.

\--

I wake with Bellamy’s arms wrapped around my waist and Octavia standing over us.

“Up.” She barks. Bellamy wakes and quickly pulls his arms away.

“I don’t know what’s going on here, and I don’t care. It’s time to train.” She continues, her hands on her hips like a drill sergeant.

I hop out of bed, self conscious of being found in Bellamy’s bed and in his shirt. My cheeks burn red and my feet are cold on the floor, but Bellamy rolls over to steal a few moments more of sleep and Octavia busies herself making breakfast in the kitchen. Somewhere in the bedroom I hear Lincoln moving around. Despite my self-consciousness, the scene feels warm. It feels like home. I wonder the kind of person I would be if I had been lucky enough to grow up in a house in which I was expected to be nothing but myself. But then I feel deeply selfish and ungrateful. I grew up sleeping in feather beds, my stomach always full. I wish I was only given the opportunity to choose for myself what it is I wanted. Today is the day I take charge of my own life, refusing from now on to be simply a passive observer. 

I square my shoulders and turn to Octavia. “I’ll need something to wear today, if it isn’t too much trouble.”

She peers at me through narrowed eyes for a moment before walking into the back bedroom without another word. She returns a moment later clothing folded in her hands. Like last night, I slip into them right in the middle of the living room. She’s handed me a black tunic and trousers identical to the ones she is wearing. My hair hangs loose around my shoulders instead of its usual elaborate coil at the nape of my neck. I think of horror that would befall my ladies maids were they to see me now.

“Come sit,” Octavia beckons to me to the kitchen table. “You too Bellamy!” she shouts at her brother. He swears at her, then does as he’s told.

Lincoln joins us soon after and we share a quick breakfast of eggs around their rickety kitchen table.

After breakfast Octavia declares it time for my official training to begin. I rise to my feet cautiously as she barks at Bellamy to stay put, apparently he is to continue to rest while Octavia handles my training on her own. His broken ribs still need healing and sparring will do nothing to speed up the process.

She leads me out of the small house and into the bustling streets of the village. We do not stop in the town square, instead we continue into the forest, mud squelching around our boots. We walk for what feels like maybe two miles before Octavia slows, pushing her way into a thicket of trees I would not have seen without her. 

She leads me into a well-disguised clearing, and I see that two women are already waiting for us. Raven, the beautiful dark haired girl from last night and an older woman with dark skin and a look in her eyes that says murder. 

“This had better not be a mistake.” She snaps at Octavia before anyone else can say a word.

“My brother trusts her, Indra.” Octavia spits back, walking to a hollowed out log and pulling out a short broad sword.

“And your brother has always exercised such excellent judgment.” She replies, her words dripping with sarcasm. 

“It’s good enough for me.” Octavia says. “And besides, what do you suggest we do instead? Kill her?” 

“It isn’t the worst idea you’ve ever had.” The woman called Indra replies and her tightly coiled form let’s me know she is perfectly capable of killing me. My blood runs cold. Bellamy I trust, but perhaps I was foolish to trust these strangers so quickly. My eyes dart around the clearing plotting a path of escape.

“Oh come on!” Raven shouts from across the thicket. “We’re wasting time.”

Indra and Octavia shrug in a vague sense of agreement, an unspoken truce passing between them and my pulse quiets a little but not by much.

Octavia turns and looks me over for a moment before tossing the broad sword to me. I jut my hands out to catch it, and snatch it out of the air by its handle by sheer luck. 

Indra passes Octavia the sword she had in her hands and before my brain has a chance to catch up, Octavia launches herself at me and knocks me to the ground.

The fall knocks the wind out of me and the sword out of my hand.

“Get up!” Octavia barks. “That’s seriously the best you can do?”

I spring to my feet, wishing desperately I had paid more attention when my father requested I take fencing lessons. I was always more interested in maps and books and healing than hand-to-hand combat. 

Octavia launches herself at my again, and this time I manage to side step her.

“Sword up!” Indra yells from the sidelines.

“Keep moving!” Raven shouts in a slightly less disdainful voice.

This time I manage to stay on me feet for roughly three minutes before Octavia knocks me flat on my back again.

What follows is the most difficult afternoon of my life. Octavia spars with me again and again until my legs are too tired to stand on their own. Indra teaches me the finer points of swordsmanship though she seems less than pleased to be doing so. Raven educates me about strategy to foresee what your opponent is going to do before they do it. She drills me to always be one step ahead.

I feel as if I have been in that thicket being knocked to the ground for days, weeks, my entire lifetime when Octavia finally declares it is time for lunch. Only four hours have passed.

I shuffle behind them on our way back, my sore legs carrying me slowly, but the pain gives me pride. It is a sign that I am finally doing something and I couldn’t be happier. The burning in my lungs feels like fuel being set alight. 

Octavia, Indra and Raven make it to town before I do and I am equal parts annoyed to have been left behind and grateful they believe me capable enough to be on my own. 

By the time I bust into the small house on the outskirts of town the kitchen is already a cacophony of activity, it is so busy it takes me a minute to notice he’s here.

Sitting next to Raven, holding her hand, his long hair falling in his eyes, is Finn. 

I feel as if my eyes take a moment to adjust to the scene. Everything else in the room seems to go a little blurry.

He notices me only a moment after, his eyes going wide with shock then narrowing, and I realize it is likely difficult for him to recognize me, in Octavia’s clothes, my face streaked with sweat and dirt, debris and leaves still stuck in my hair. I look nothing like the polished princess who visited him in the stables just two weeks ago. 

The whole room goes quiet at my appearance in the doorway, and a wide smile spreads across Raven’s face.

“Look who made it back.” she quips, pulling Finn up by the hand to stand next to her. The look of confusion splashed across his face is almost comical. “This is my fiancé Finn.” Raven continues, apparently oblivious to the frantic look in Finn’s eyes.

“I-“ Finn sputters for a moment, before regaining composure. “There’s a lot of people who are awfully worried about you, Princess.” His tone implies that he has been one of them.

“Finn works in the stables at the castle.” Raven explains. “But don’t worry, he won’t tell a soul you’re here.”

Before I can stop myself I say, “I didn’t know you were engaged.”

A look of hurt flashes like lightning across Finn’s dark features. But Raven thinks the question is for her.

“Yes, well, wearing a ring is hardly practical and we don’t have the money.” She replies to, still cheerful. “We’ll be getting married next month. A long time coming, huh Finn? What’s it been three years? Four?”

“Four, I think.” He replies in a monotone.

Four years. Finn has been with this girl for four years.

He told me he loved me a month ago, and although I hardly believed him then, it adds to the endless pile of lies that make up my life. I wonder if anything in my life has even been entirely truthful, something without the pretense of the castle or the shadow of war and death and secret fiancés. Then from across the room I catch Bellamy’s dark eyes.

He snatches an extra sandwich from the cutting board, and ignoring Octavia’s protests and Finn’s beseeching glance, grabs me by the hand and pulls me outside.

He doesn’t say a word as he leads me to a stoop attached to the back of the house and pulls me down to sit next to him on the bottom-most stair. Spring wind carries tiny white puffs of new growth around us. One gets stuck in his hair and I reach up to brush it away.

“What’s up with you and Finn?”

“Nothing gets past you.” I sigh.

“I make a point of it.”

“I’d really rather not talk about it.” I reply, closing my eyes and tilting my head back to bathe in the afternoon sun.

“You know each other.”

He isn’t letting this go.

“Yes, we know each other.”

“Does Raven know?”

“No.”

“Okay.” He says, wrapping his arm around my shoulder and pulling my head down to rest on his broad shoulder.

“I’m sorry.” He whispers against my hair.

“Don’t be.” I reply, and I mean it. I don’t want anyone’s pity, let alone Bellamy’s for something as inconsequential as Finn.

“Did you love him?” Bellamy asks like it hurts to say the words.

I pick my head up from his shoulder and look him in the eye. “No.” I say emphatically.

A small smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.

“Good."

He hands me the stolen sandwich and I eat it without protest.

“Get up your strength,” he nudges me with a laugh.

“Why?” I ask, mouth full.

He raises his brows, smiling like he’s in on a joke. “I’m your teacher for the rest of the afternoon.”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to spar because of your ribs.” I reply.

“I wore Octavia down.” He says with a smile.

\--

Bellamy fills canteens of water for us and I follow him back to the thicket in the woods.

Like his sister he pulls two broadswords out from their hiding places in the trees, and again I feel a pang of guilt for what my mother and her advisors have driven the villagers to, hiding their weapons in hollowed out trees.

He lunges at me with his sword and I block it in the way Octavia taught me this morning. We dance around the clearing, swords clanging. Bellamy is strong, but I am quick on my feet and manage to sidestep his swings. And so it goes on like this for hours, Bellamy barking instructions at me, and me learning quickly.

We’ve been training for most of the afternoon when I start to really get the hang of things. I’m becoming bolder when Bellamy swings his sword down hard and I stop it with my own, just when I think I have him bested, he reaches across with his other hand, and slaps me across the face. It isn’t hard enough to hurt, but it is enough that it makes my eyes sting.

I step back and draw my hand up to cheek.

“That wasn’t fair!” I yell at him.

 His dark locks are plastered to his forehead with sweat, he laughs a little and the sound is so beautiful it reaches a place deep in my bones.

 “Who said this was going to be fair, Princess?”

 “How am I supposed to learn?” I shoot back. “It’s impossible to learn strategy once you throw anarchy into the mix.”

 “It’s time you embrace a little chaos.” he replies, smile still lighting up his usually dark face. “And you’re just mad you lost.”

 I know he’s right and it only fuels my competitive fire.

 I lunge at him but he sidesteps me easily. Then he brings his sword down on mine so hard it is knocked out of my hand.

 I refuse to be defeated so easily. I launch myself forward on the balls of my feet and with the force of the entirety of my body weight; I push him to the ground.

The smile on his face disappears, replaced by a look of shock.

I realize what I’ve done a moment too late; I’m on top of him, the two of us in the middle of the clearing, early evening sun streaming like pin pricks of light filtered by the quaking aspens above us. 

“What are you doing?” he says, face still a little dazed, voice quiet. 

“Embracing chaos.” I whisper.

His dark eyes flicker to my lips, and before I have time to talk myself out of it I crush my mouth to his.

He freezes in shock, and for a brief and terrible moment I think I’ve made a mistake, but then he responds. Slowly at first, then enthusiastically, mouth moving against mine like he has been wandering the desert for forty days and I am an oasis.

He threads his hands through my hair and pulls me closer to him, tongue darting between my lips. I reach up to grasp the sides of his perfect face, holding him like the pads of my fingers can erase all the anger simmering beneath the harsh angles

He kisses down the side of my neck and I gasp against his touch.

We kiss and kiss until our lips are bruised and swollen. He gasps my name against my mouth like he's reminding himself I'm real. He pulls back, cradling my head and his hands and whispers "I've wanted to do that since the moment I saw you sitting on that stupid throne." I laugh in response and kiss him again.

Beneath the canopy of aspens, we lay on the new spring grass, my head nestled in the crook of his shoulder. We say nothing, not daring to interrupt the sounds of the forest and the way our hearts beat in sync.

It feels like we lay pressed up against each other for hours, the sun is sinking dangerously low in the horizon and I know the others will worry if we don’t make our way back soon.

Before I can speak, Bellamy clears his throat like he’s been wanting to say something for a while.

“Clarke,” his voice cracks a little around my name. “I know who killed your father.”


End file.
